Spam Spree

I have deleted weiweis posts but one in hopes of restoring the original thread order. She (?) still has to be banned, though - just mentioning because now, it might appear as if she'd posted only one post. (There were ten.)

I'd like to delete the other spam spree, too, actually, to restore the thread order. Any objections? I'm just asking because Ba already edited those posts, removing the links. I think in such spree cases unbumping (deleting their posts) is alright, though. The user in qzestion is Tcrubuyggo.

I think we can delete spam without needing to edit it. I suppose in terms of fairness we should refrain from deleting all examples until the account in question has been banned, their IP black listed, their home address traced and set on fire, and the bodies of their childhood pets dug up and violated... but on the other hand i don't see any reason to doubt the word of a moderator who dealt with the threads.

I think we can delete spam without needing to edit it. I suppose in terms of fairness we should refrain from deleting all examples until the account in question has been banned, their IP black listed, their home address traced and set on fire, and the bodies of their childhood pets dug up and violated... but on the other hand i don't see any reason to doubt the word of a moderator who dealt with the threads.

Made me smile

Should I mention that i saw a great deal on penis enlargement the other day. I think I'll rush out and get one...

Actually, when you press report, there's a mail being sent to all sweepers -which are several, as you know - and as far as I remember, you can include a short message after pressing the report button. (It isn't necessary though, as obvious spam speaks for itself.) That means there is no need to write pms to the sweepers or caontact them by any other means, because most of us check their mails first when we go online.

There is still the matter of people registering to advertise Discworld related stuff, because the intention is that of a spammer, though of a more benevolent one, and we never quite cleared wether it should be treated just like the obvious spam advertising porn, wigs, and dating sites, or wether we should ignore it as long as it isn't getting annoying (say, twenty posts just for the sake of advertising something vaguely interesting, and no other contributions to the board). So, we have no real protocol for those cases where someone posts about a Discworld convention or about the fact he wants to get rid of his Discworld collection via ebay.

But when it comes to the obvious spam, the protocol is: Don't answer, press report, wait.

I believe we have a random question during registration as a kind of bot-capture method? It may be that we need to, ah, bolster our defenses a little, so to speak. Or at least look into our current ones to see what's making them falter.

I've been on boards with a 24 hour and even a 7 day waiting period, there are "intelligent" captcha's (Like 2 pictures of dogs and one of a cat and the question is to identify "the one picture that is not a dog"), and there is the slightly time consuming human approval option, which is pretty safe...

Might be one of several things:
1) A test to see if automated posting/spamming works, but with an "innocent message".
2) probably later to be used for bumping spam.
3) Posts to be later converted to spam.

Just so you know all these people are being banned as they're reported. If you're reporting them in this thread it saves a bit of time if you link to their profile like Hsing is mostly doing, then it's just a click-ban process.

I added another 2 human verification questions to see if that makes any difference, and we can try captcha instead if it doesn't but I think we talked about tryin g to avoid that in the past? Also, if the spammers are actually humans it doesn't maker any difference.

P.S. The Akismet plugin is nearly a year old and not supported by vbulletin, but there's probably something similar we can do.

...needs to be banned. I found him to be online after his first spam post and added infraction to see wether that would stop him/her/ it from actually posting more spam.
I didn't really know what I was doing there...

I am sure all mods got the reported post message. It is blatant advertising, but we still haven't decided what to do in those cases the advertisement is Discworld related!
Could we -at least two or three mods- agree upon what to do with that thread, and on what to do about DW related spam in the future?

I think this sounds a bit presumptous: "I'll be on the boards over the next couple of months, so look out for some competitions and promotions that will start appearing soon!" - as if they're supposed to be here and one of us has agreed to it, which they have not, without any introductions. Maybe to the DD with it?